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More Than One Billion Mobile Workers Worldwide by the End of 2010

According to a recent study by IDC, a global provider of IT market intelligence, the world’s mobile worker population will pass the one billion mark by the end of this year.

By 2013, the total of office-based, non-office-based and home-based mobile workers will grow to nearly 1.2 billion people, representing more than a third of the world’s workforce.

IDC foresees that the most significant gains will be in the emerging economies of Asia/Pacific, aside Japan, where a strong economic recovery, new interest in unified communications and a high demand in flexibility and mobility in work, will drive healthy growth in all aspects of mobility spending.

According to Sean Ryan, research analyst for Mobile Enterprise Software, there is vast opportunities for bringing a variety of mobile technologies to workforce worldwide, even outside the United States and Japan, where mobile worker population has reached its peak. Although there are still some barriers until we reach full-scale penetration of mobility solutions for the large worker populations across all region, the potential market is enormous.

The United States and Japan have the highest percentage of mobile workers in their workforce. The 72.2% of the U.S. workers were mobile in 2008 and this percentage will grow to 75.5%, representing 119.7 million mobile workers, in 2013. The numbers are equally high for Japan, expecting to reach the 49.3 million mobile workers in 2013, representing 74.5% of its total workforce.

Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan) leads the mobile workforce representing the largest total number of mobile workers worldwide, with 546.4 million mobile workers in 2008 growing to 734.5 million or 37.4% of the total workforce in 2013 .

Western Europe’s mobile workforce will total 129.5 million mobile workers (50.3% of the workforce) in 2013, surpassing the United States totals.

The rest of the world, meaning Canada,Latin America and the emerging market countries in Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa will reach the 153.2 million mobile workers by 2013.

By the end of 2013, the Asia/Pacific and Japan regions will be hosting the 62% of the world’s mobile workforce, with a much bigger growth margin than U.S., as the penetration rates for mobile workers in the total workforce are at a low 13.5%.